And if your CPA says otherwise, fire them. I have seen two articles already where a Kickstarter video game project says they had to pay taxes on their left over money in their first year, this makes me sad, because you can easily avoid that.

NOTE: There has been some confusion on this article where people seem to think I am suggesting you avoid or evade taxes. That is NOT the case at all. These methods used are 100% legal ways to reduce or postpone taxes paid. I want to be very clear: ALL OF THESE METHODS are 100% legal and are in no way avoiding or evading taxes.

In order to eliminate taxes all together there is a simple accounting rule and election of income that you can use, if that fail (which it wont 99% of the time), then there are a few more complex methods that can not only reduce the tax, but can set yourself up to have a tax benefit to carry over to future years, and should probably be used regardless of your situation.

I will start with the first and most simple method:

Accrual Accounting.

Accrual accounting is an election that is made on a tax return that allows you to claim income when it is earned, rather than when it is received. This means that every video game company (or many others) out there who get Kickstarter funds would not have to pay taxes on those advanced payments until the game is actually made and distributed to those individuals who pre-purchased it.

Going further, let’s just assume that you have given away items such as T-shirts, artwork, and prizes that you distribute to your backers the first year. You would have to include in income up to cost (or fair market value) of those items on your tax return, because technically you did provide a portion of the service and some of that income was technically “earned”. Therefore, you will be responsible for some of the income earned. What’s important to note, is that you will easily be able to offset that income “earned” with the first year’s expenses or the cost of those items (t-shirts, art, etc.).

Simply electing the accrual accounting system is not enough in itself (which anyone can do including individuals, LLCs, Corps), the IRS still requires a special election to classify the income. If that election is not made, the income falls under the rules set in publication 538 (passage in quotes below) and you do not get any benefit from the accrual election, further, you must use the instructions in pub 538 to properly elect the classification on your tax return in order to make that income an “advanced payment”:

“You report an amount in your gross income on the earliest of the following dates.

*When you receive payment.

When the income amount is due to you.

When you earn the income.

When title has passed.”

It is important to properly elect to classify this income. I highly recommend a professional handle this for you, as it is easy for someone untrained in taxes to make a mistake with this election. The key to this is to talk to many professionals and ask them if they understand these concepts, as I have seen over and over, most professional do not.

Other Tax Savings Tactics:

Research and Development tax credit

This one I write about all the time, and if you are a video game dev and your accountant has not offered this to you, fire them right now, the benefits are tremendous and could potentially eliminate taxes on income generated from both Kickstarter and sales to the general public. The credit requires some heavy analysis. My firm and many others will not charge until the benefit is used, so it makes complete sense for you to utilize it.

Domestic Production Activity Deduction

This deduction was created in 2004 and was meant to be geared toward the manufacturing industry, then the attorneys over at Electronic Arts successfully lobbied congress and extended it to software and video games. This deduction is 9% of net income, which is an incredible tax break that nearly nobody knows about. For someone that has a net income of $100,000 can easily write off $9,000 as an additional deduction, potentially getting up to $3,000 back in taxes. There are many other requirements to elect this deductions, so again, I advise you to consult a professional with experience utilizing this deduction, not all of them have this skill.

Updated 4/19/2013 with additional information, fleshing out the concepts

Again, this article is only meant as informational, many individuals and companies have unique situations, I recommend you consult a professional before applying any of the above information.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the
RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.